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Law / United States / Maine

Unauthorized dissemination of certain private images (AI-generated image amendment)

17-A M.R.S. § 511-A

In force since .

An AI prohibited practices rule binding public and private bodies.

Obligation class
Prohibition
Audit expectation
none
Setting the rule reaches
General

What it requires

  • Do not intentionally or knowingly disseminate, display, or publish an image of an identifiable person in a state of nudity or engaged in a sexual act or sexual contact without that person's consent, with intent to harass, torment, or threaten; this reaches an image that has been AI-created or AI-modified to appear to show the person in that state, not only an authentic photograph.
  • A violation is a Class D crime, carrying imprisonment of less than one year and a fine of up to $2,000.

These lines are LexLint's reading of the law's text.

In the frameworks

NIST AI RMF
  • MAP 3.3Targeted application scope is specified and documented based on the system’s capability, established context, and AI system categorization.
NIST AI 600-1
MIT mitigations Draft
  • 1.5Safety Decision Frameworks
  • 3.3Access Management
NIST Privacy Framework
  • CT.PO-P1Policies, processes, and procedures for authorizing data processing (e.g., organizational decisions, individual consent), revoking authorizations, and maintaining authorizations are established and in place.
FINOS AIGF
ETSI EN 304 223
  • 5.1.2-1Business need and security risks written down and assessed before deciding to build an AI system.
  • 5.1.4-5End-users told which uses of the system are prohibited.

Our reading of where this law's duties sit in each framework. It never says that running a control meets the law. How we read a framework against the law

Identifiers refer to ETSI EN 304 223 V2.1.1 (2025-12), © ETSI 2025, all rights reserved. ETSI owns the standard; no ETSI text (titles or sentences) is reproduced here. The standard is free to download from ETSI.

If you get it wrong

Criminal exposureYes

Criminal exposure note

Unauthorized dissemination of certain private images under 17-A M.R.S. § 511-A is a Class D crime, punishable by imprisonment of less than one year (17-A M.R.S. § 1604(1)(D)) and a fine of up to $2,000 (17-A M.R.S. § 1704(4)).

Penalty structure

Maximum fine for a Class D crime under 17-A M.R.S. § 1704(4); the statute also authorizes imprisonment of less than one year under § 1604(1)(D), which is not a monetary figure.

Rule
Fixed only
As of
Currency
USD
Fixed cap
2,000

What it makes you log

Logging duty

Section 511-A defines the crime and its penalty; it states no logging or record-keeping duty. Subsection 5 governs court access to case records in a prosecution under this section, which is a rule about judicial record confidentiality rather than a duty to create or keep a record of the underlying conduct.

Kind
None
As of

What this law does

Drafted with AI

Drafted with AI from the cited sources under the direction of UnGovr staff. UnGovr holds editorial responsibility for this page. How this site is made

Research summary

Legal information, not legal advice. This is LexLint's own research summary of a public legal source, and it creates no attorney-client relationship. For decisions that matter, consult qualified counsel in the relevant jurisdiction. About LexLint

A person is guilty of unauthorized dissemination of certain private images, a Class D crime, if, with intent to harass, torment, or threaten, the person intentionally or knowingly disseminates, displays, or publishes an image of another person in a state of nudity or engaged in a sexual act or sexual contact, or an image that has been created or modified so that it appears to show the depicted person in such a state, knowing the depicted person is identifiable and has not consented.

A 2025 amendment (P.L. 2025, ch. 400) added the created-or-modified-image language and a matching definition of image that reaches a computer data file or other electronically or mechanically reproduced visual image, bringing an AI-generated or AI-manipulated sexual deepfake within the existing non-consensual-intimate-image crime rather than creating a separate offense.

The same chapter also touched Maine's protection-from-abuse and protection-from-harassment statutes (19-A M.R.S. § 4102; 5 M.R.S. § 4651), per the enacting bill's own list of affected sections; those companion provisions are not separately researched here. The Legislature's own bill-status page records enactment and the Governor's signature on , not June 25 as a secondary tracker reports.

When LexLint raises it

When your app profile says your app generates images with AI, generates video with AI or publishes adult content.

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